i've been piggybacking off this one dude for like 4 hunts and he keeps like solo carrying all the monsters and then giving me a "good job!" when the mission's complete and i'm pretty sure i'm not even doing anything and mostly getting lost

it's fine, and probably preferable for gunning weapons. i hate aiming on controllers.

there's just a whole lot of buttons you need to memorize and you need to mouse scroll for changing ammo types which is iffy and there's a few inconsistencies between left click and pressing the "a" button and the radial menu is still quite confusing to me but it's not necessary to use a controller at all i think

Melee weapons will auto-draw when you Left Click to attack, however ranged weapons will not by default -- you will need to draw with either CTRL or R (forcing a reload). This is because CTRL is the default attack key, while Left Click is only set to attack while already drawn. To fix this, just swap the bindings. Go to the “Ranged Weapons” tab under the “Keyboard Settings” options of the “Controls” menu, unbind Left Click from “Fire/Shoot (Weapon Drawn)” and rebind it to “Draw Weapon / Standard Attack”, then remove CTRL from “Draw Weapon / Standard Attack” and rebind it to “Fire/Shoot (Weapon Drawn)” as you are required to have something there. Now your ranged weapons will auto-draw like a melee weapon.